You'd definitely find dry little black rice-grain-like droppings on all surfaces if you had mice, especially in rooms that have food, and more will appear if you clean them away. Also, little sticky splotches that are easy to mistake for drink spillages, because they pee everywhere too.
I managed to get rid of mine, but I occasionally still find evidence they were here in out of the way corners that I forgot about.
Brave mice - because I'm sure some will have that trait - and those infected with toxoplasmosis won't care about cats.
I'm one of those people with a low tolerance for depressing reality. I'm on medication for depression and anxiety, for what good they do me. Wires and chips in the brain is a step too far.
The reason I'm in the state I'm in is that I suffered a work-stress related breakdown, but the cracks have always been there. As you might imagine I am not ready to be forced back into work which I will find unbearable. Combine that with body horror and you might be able to understand my reaction and stance to this.
I'm one of those people with a low tolerance for depressing reality. I'm on medication for depression and anxiety, for what good they do me. Wires and chips in the brain is a step too far.
The reason I'm in the state I'm in is that I suffered a work-stress related breakdown, but the cracks have always been there. As you might imagine I am not ready to be forced back into work which I will find unbearable. Combine that with body horror and you might be able to understand my reaction and stance to this.
How about cultivating a world that is less depressing before jamming wires into people's skulls to "fix" a problem that might not originate there?
Oh no, that won't do, the people who have low tolerance for depressing reality have to be turned into drones for the corporate machine just like everyone else. If we can turn off the emotions that derive from a sense of self-preservation, they'll be more willing workers for the constant grind.
In before employers require that their applicants must have one of these implants. People without will not be hired.
By the 24th century we won't be Star Trek's Federation, we'll be an unholy hybrid of the Ferengi and the Borg.
I reckon I've been pretty lucky. The handful I've attended haven't been that bad.
The "worst" one, at least from my perspective, was probably a relative's where I was an usher and messed up something with the church seating. The guests sorted that one out themselves when they thought I wasn't looking. The wedding itself went without further problems, but that minor mess-up on my part will always stick with me.
The next "worst" was the one where the reception / after-party had a DJ who cranked the music volume another notch every 10 minutes. The venue had a literal decibel meter on the wall, and I think he had made it his goal to max that sucker out. I've been in clubs where the music is so loud you can't hear your own voice when you're talking (shouting) to someone else and this went well beyond that.
By contrast, the ceremony itself had been very demure and pleasant, in an English country manor house no less, and were it not for that DJ, it might have qualified as the best.
The best one was probably when I was a kid. I don't have any memories of the church ceremony, which has to mean I was bored out of my mind, but must have behaved myself and there were no problems of any sort. I vaguely remember the reception in a function room at a hotel and there was nothing of note there that I remember either, except exploring the hotel. Weather was good. Must have been perfect.
"Mum" is a shortening of "mummy" (or similar) which almost certainly came before "mother" (or its ancestor words) as a word for one's primary female caregiver if not also birth giver, on account of it being baby-talk that ancient parents naturally took to be a name bestowed by the child.
In languages descended from Proto-Indo-European, the -t(h)er suffix is a familial grammatical particle that has long since ceased being productive, and remains frozen in all daughter languages. Speaking of which, the -ter of "daughter" is the same particle.
That "mum", at least phonetically, is also an abbreviation of "ma'am" is a coincidence caused by dropping so many sounds from the original "ma dame" that it reverts to, well, mumbling, which isn't far off baby talk, all things considered.
FWIW, there are places in the world where "Mam" is a name given to mothers by their children, which is also rooted in baby-talk and also has no connection to the other pronunciation of "ma'am".
To her face, "Mum", but when referring to her indirectly it's usually, "my mother".
I remember asking if it was OK to stop calling her "Mummy" but I'm not sure how old I was at the time. Definitely under 10 though. Probably heard other kids of the same age calling their mothers "Mum" when they were being collected from school and figured I'd better act accordingly and do the same.
(The only people who use "Mom" here are folks in the West Midlands, I think. And American ex-pats, I guess, but that doesn't really count.)
Racial / cultural supremacists wouldn't want to kill anyone of their preferred (usually their own) group, and certainly not a significant number of them. They'd basically have to gerrymander the water supply to arrange things so that only those they want to be poisoned actually get poisoned.
That's 1) expensive and 2) someone's going to notice.
It would be far easier, and cheaper to go full genocide and start shooting.
In one case, active in the world right now, the "undesirables" live in one area, and rather than poison the water, the supremacists have simply cut it off. They've also implemented the "start shooting" strategy.
I wish them all a crippling attack of conscience, and if not that, the inability to distinguish who they want to shoot from who they don't want to shoot.
It sets permissions (ch ange modification rights) on all files (-R = recursive, stepping down through directories) in the file system (hence starting at /) so that they can be read, (re)written and executed as programs by all users (the 777 part). 000 would be no permissions for anyone (except for the root user), which would be just as bad.
So I was watching a video the other day about weird coincidences, and there was one entry where some guy was told he'd already checked in for a flight. After much confusion, it turned out there were two guys of the exact same name booked on the same flight going to the same place.
Two balding middle aged white guys. Travelling alone - until they each made a new friend anyway - to Thailand.
Location is problematic. The Earth rotates, moves through space and the continents move. Even if you manage to compensate for the first two, where you'd need to be in the present to see what you want to see in the past is almost certainly not going to be where you think it is.
These are all contemporary turn-of-the-century comedy TV series where each pairing shares at least one cast member:
Spaced - You'd probably want to be reasonably familiar with UK pop culture of the time to truly appreciate it, but it's still somewhat entertaining even without that.
Black Books - Sister series to Spaced. Probably not in the same universe, but shares some of the same cast. A bit more surreal and doesn't require so much pop culture knowledge.
Green Wing - Turn the surrealism up yet another notch, add in a teaspoon of darkness, then set it in a hospital.
JAM - Turn the surrealism dial fully around to the black setting, to the point of being outright disturbing and wrong.
Big Train - Turn that dial back into silly and relatively light hearted... though you can tell there's something a bit troubling going on at the same time.
Outside that stable, but you may have watched:
Babylon 5 - Top rated sci-fi. Some episodes can be a bit meh, but the ones that aren't are amazing.
The Animatrix - Apocryphal short animations of various stories set in the universe of The Matrix, which you might want to rewatch first.
Yes, I have been under a rock since the turn of the century. I like it under here.
Updating databases to support anything other than that which would run on a 1970s mainframe costs the sort of money that eats into C-level's yacht funds, so it won't happen. These are the people who when faced with the "pick two from done right, done quick and done cheap" will never pick the first one.
Or in other words, if your name contains something outside the English alphabet's A-Z, you're out of luck. They'll give you an approximation you don't want and you'll like it. Lower case? What's that? You're Irish and your surname has an apostrophe? Fk you, that's in the bin, you're OBRIEN now.
I was about to suggest SHXWMATHKWAYAMASAM as something that would be bound to work, but it's 18 characters, and, being two more than a power of two, that all but guarantees that someone will truncate it at 16. Sigh.
There's a bit in an Agatha Christie Poirot story about how if composer Guiseppe Verdi had been English he'd have been "Joe Green". I'm not sure if Verdi ever used a translation, but it's known that Beethoven referred to himself (or allowed himself to be referred to) as "Louis" in French. "Ludwig" is the German equivalent of that name.
I can recommend behindthename.com if this sort of thing piques your interest.
It could be owned by an entity called Sutton Snax. That probably isn't what they're going for, but it could be read that way.
Now, x-apostrophe might be (more?) correct in that instance but it's far more forgivable than any interpretation as a plural.